Of Blood and Love
by Rescue Pet Lover
Summary: The neighboring kingdoms of Nydia and Calid have gone to war, and the former requests the assistance of the Moors. Maleficent sends Diaval to spy on the distant land. But when he fails to return, it falls on her to seek out her most loyal servant and closest friend, and she has to come to terms with some of the feelings she harbors toward him. Maleval.
1. Chapter 1

"Diaval?" His name, her voice, summoned him from his thoughts. He struggled to restrain the complaint that threatened to come forward. He had spent the whole night watching over the queen in her window. Their nestling was round with pregnancy, and though she slept with her husband, Maleficent did not trust the human healers to deliver their grandchild correctly. Needless to say, the servant spent much of the time sleep deprived. But he would not complain. He did not complain. _Ever_. He owed Maleficent his life, and he would not a little lost sleep change his feelings toward his beloved mistress.

He stretched and rubbed his eyes, and then stumbled to his feet from the roots of the tree he had been sleeping against. "Yes, mistress?"

She was a few feet away from him, looming over a piece of parchment with indecipherable text. It mattered not to him; birds could not read, and he did not care to. "Two of our neighboring kingdoms, Nydia and Calid, have gone to war." He waited patiently for her to continue, scanning over her wings with his eyes. He would never get enough of seeing her wings. She was a sight; she had always been a beauty, even when he was newly human and had no idea why he was drawn to her like a moth to a candle. "Nydia has requested our help. I want you to fly there and decide whether or not our forces are needed."

He gawped at her a second. "Right this second, mistress?" he finally managed. The flight to Nydia was an arduous journey; it would probably span two or three months just to get there. Assessing the situation would take at least as long, and the trip back would be, if anything, harder than the one there, with the winds opposing him. He would miss the birth of Aurora's baby and the christening. But he would not complain, he would not complain, he most certainly would not complain. If she wanted him to leave, he would leave without question.

"On the morrow," she replied softly. Her eyes were conflicted. "Get some rest." She tried not to look at him. It was the only way, she convinced herself. They needed to know what was going on, and Diaval could find out. There was no logical reason for her to already be missing him, or for her to want to grab ahold of him and beg him to disagree with her. They were _friends_. Friends of thirty years, perhaps, but only friends, and friends did not feel such dreaded emotions as the ones she was currently struggling with. It was for the best, she convinced herself.

"Yes, mistress," he agreed softly. He lowered himself back down onto the roots of the tree and curled up in a fetal position. He ignored the feelings of rejection that sifted through his chest. He was her _servant_, not her husband. It was his job to complete missions for her. Even long missions. Even hard missions. Even missions that were especially dangerous. He was, after all, her right hand, according to Balthazar. He tried to go back to sleep, despite the afternoon sun, and eventually succeeded.

Maleficent left his side and walked to the water hole, listening to her wings drag the ground behind her. She didn't feel like flying; the burden of sending Diaval away weighed heavily on her shoulders. She discarded her garments on a rock and sank into the water. Her wings grew quickly sodden, but she didn't mind. Her mind was caught on thoughts of the confusing emotions that swamped her when she looked at her servant of nearly thirty years. She washed her hair methodically and tried to force those thoughts from her head. He was leaving. There was no question about it now.

She scrubbed at her hair and let it billow out into the water about her smoothly. The afternoon sun was sinking toward the horizon. Soon it would be sunset, then it would be nightfall, and then it would be dawn, and then Diaval would be leaving.

Going with him was an option. But she had promised Aurora her presence at the birth and christening of her baby. Diaval was perfectly capable of performing a mission on his own. Her gift to him of free shape-shifting was more than enough to keep him alive; he was clever, and birds were inconspicuous. He would be gone a year, maybe two, at the most. Years were like days to immortals. But a part of her knew that these years would drag by without her most loyal servant.

The sun got ever lower, and she put her clothes back on. She would spend her final hours with Diaval. She sat down next to his form. He was curled up facing away from her. She sighed and leaned her head against the tree trunk. "Diaval?" she whispered, not wanting to wake him if he was asleep.

He was not. "Yes, mistress?" He turned to face her. Her emotions must have glittered in her eyes, because his brow fuddled. "Are you alright? What's wrong?" He sat up.

She looked away. She couldn't tell him what was really wrong—that she was already missing him, and she didn't want him to leave, and she harbored feelings for him that she would never openly express. "I'm fine. The question is, though, are _you_ alright?" He looked confused, so she elaborated, "I will not send you away if you do not wish to go."

For just a split second, relief flooded his eyes, and she knew that he was going to beg for her forgiveness and tell her that he didn't want to do it. But then it disappeared, and her heart ached dully as it had taken to doing when she looked at him. "I will deny you nothing, mistress. Your wish is my command. I will leave for Nydia at morning."

She wanted to slap him and shake him and beg him to stay. But she couldn't, because that would give too much away, so she instead nodded. "If you change your mind, I will not force you to leave." She wanted to produce a list three feet long of reasons he shouldn't go. It was dangerous. It was long. It would drain him physically. He still hadn't mastered all of the important transformations yet, particularly the dragon. He needed to go to the christening of their grandchild. He needed…Gods, why couldn't he just get the_ hint_ that she wanted him to stay? Gentler, she added, "I don't want you to miss anything important. Balthazar could go, instead."

He forced a smile. "Really, it's fine. I'll be back before you even miss me, and then I'll be aggravating you all over again. You'll want to send me back." He winked at her and yawned pointedly.

She didn't dare tell him that she was already missing him. "Get some rest." She leaned her head back against the trunk of the tree and let the breeze tease her feathers. A part of her longed for the open wind through her wings, for the adrenaline rush and for the way it let her forget everything else. But she didn't want to leave him. She wanted to spend every last second with him until he left.

She could almost watch the moon and stars moving through the sky, dawn getting closer by the minute long after the raven man had fallen asleep. His hair was mussed. She counted each even, deep breath. She wanted to touch him, but didn't dare. They avoided physical contact at all costs. He didn't touch her after the threat fed to him almost three decades ago: _If you touch me, you'll lose that hand_. But now, now, after all these years, she wanted nothing more than to run her fingers through his ebony hair and trace the scars over his chest.

Hours ticked by until sunrise. She didn't wake him. She didn't need to. Diaval's internal clock ran five minutes early. He stretched and rolled over, almost knocking into her before he realized that she had not moved since he'd fallen to sleep at sunset. "Morning, mistress," he murmured groggily. He rubbed his eyes and slicked his hair back with his hands as she'd been longing to do all night.

"Morning," she returned softly. He didn't have to make many preparations. Traveling as a bird, he would eat and drink along the way. It was less than twenty minutes after his awakening that they stood next to each other, each looking into the dawn sky and dreading it more than the other. "Are you sure?" she asked finally. Her green eyes flashed at him hopefully, almost begging him not to leave. She regretted ever approaching him on the matter. He would never deny her anything.

He nodded. "How long do I have, mistress?"

"Two years." Two years was more than enough time. "If you're not back by then, I'll come searching." Her eyes glimmered. Was she going to cry? Crying was a rather foreign thing to her, but the unfamiliar sensations of despair and the heated feelings behind her eyes were enough to make her swallow the budding lump in her throat and blink hard enough to chase them away. He hadn't noticed a thing.

He bit his lip. He took a hesitant step forward, and she expected him to morph into his natural form and take to the skies, but he stopped. "Mistress, would it be appropriate for…um…" His cheeks colored. She waited. He finally burst out, "Can I have a hug?"

She stared at him, taken aback. He awaited her answer with bated breath until she opened her arms and, taking a step forward, replied, "Of course." He stepped into her arms timidly, and his arms found their way around the small of her back, brushing the feathers of her wings. He was warm against her. She rested her chin on his shoulder and, for just a moment, closed her eyes and pretended that he wouldn't be leaving her in a few second. She was sure she was squeezing him tight enough to hurt; she knew that she was outpouring all of her emotions in the first physical contact that passed between them in decades. He inhaled deeply into her hair. She wondered how long her scent would carry with him, and how long it would be before she forgot the way his body felt against hers.

He was so solid and warm. But if she couldn't rip herself away from him, he would never leave. It seemed like a viable option at the moment. Her old demons were so far away that they were a scarce memory. He was safe as long as he was near her. Couldn't she keep him safe and close just a few minutes more? She couldn't. She stepped out of his arms and glowered into his eyes. "Be safe," she ordered with more passion and strength than she thought she'd ever put in an order to him before.

"I will," he promised. He stepped away from her. With one lingering glance back at her, he morphed into his natural form and took to the air. He circled above her for a mere moment and jetted off into the dawn. His caws echoed in her mind long after his form had disappeared over the horizon.

She clutched her arms to her chest and bent her chin to her breastbone. Her wings curled comfortingly around her. Diaval would be back soon, she promised herself. Two years was nothing in the minds of most mortals. They would pass as days to her.

But she knew they would be two very, very long days.

She spread her wings and jetted off into the sky, heading toward the castle. Aurora's baby would be born any day. She could stay there until then, and then she would return to the moors, and she would pretend that she wasn't hurting until he returned.


	2. Chapter 2

Aurora's prince child was named Diablo. Maleficent discouraged her from naming her child the Spanish word for devil—"Evil names don't lead to good people," she tried to warn, thinking of herself—but the queen protested, stating he was named for Diaval, after all, and the fairy felt quite stupid. The christening was nothing like the queen's own. The only witnesses were the castle workers, the proud parents, the three bumbling pixies, and Maleficent herself. Her beastie was disappointed that Diaval wasn't there, and even more sad that he wouldn't be back for such a long time. Her godmother didn't voice her own feelings; that she missed Diaval so greatly returning to the moors was hardly an option for her.

But she couldn't stay in the castle indefinitely. Of course, the queen would allow her to do so, but she couldn't stand it. The place that Aurora had ordered to be cleansed of iron still reeked of it, and the thick walls brought out her inner claustrophobia. Most painful of all was that her temporary bedchambers were in the very same hallway where all of the past monarchs were presented in portraits. Stefan's was just outside her door. She could hardly sleep without Diaval nearby, and feeling her fallen enemy's eyes on her made it worse. She dreamed tormented dreams, and almost every day she was tempted to fly out into the great sky and bring Diaval home.

She departed when Diablo was a month old. The child had his father's nut brown hair, but his eyes were Stefan's alone, and she couldn't hold him for more than a few minutes without remembering the portrait outside her bedchambers. Aurora had never seen the king's eyes. She didn't understand Maleficent's negative feelings, almost akin to aversion, toward her son, but she tried not to judge them or feel angry about them. She knew her godmother was dejected over Diaval's journeying. Just before the fairy left, she asked a simple question—not out of sarcasm or dark wit, but out of curiosity. "If you didn't want him to leave, why did you ask him to? He would never want you to be unhappy."

Maleficent's wings were already parted, prepared for flight, when her answer came softly, "I don't know. I just don't know."

The wind brought her little comfort as it once did. She instead spent her days reading by her childhood tree and praying every day for wind to guide Diaval's wings back to her safely. She had once heard a phrase—"_Out of sight, out of mind_"—but with her servant, all she could do was think of him and miss him and feel herself grow to love him in a way she vowed to never love again. Each night, she could only sleep while going over that memory in her mind, the memory of his arms around her waist and her hugging herself so tight and wishing her arms were as comforting as his.

Sometimes, but unfrequently, she cried.

Aurora's visits became more and more seldom, and she knew the queen was offended that she didn't like her own grandchild, but she couldn't look upon him without seeing Stefan's eyes. His eyes brought unwanted memories, and the only person that could chase away her demons was the one person she sent away.

She counted the days as they passed and willed them to pass faster so she could go searching for her dear friend and wrap him in a hug again. She would never send him away again. She was forgetting the sound of his voice. She couldn't remember the exact hue of his obsidian eyes, or the way the light danced over them. How many scars did he have on his back? Was it four or five?

_Five_, she remembered. Four until the day a soldier threw a blade at him while he was protecting her as a wolf and it split the area between his shoulder blades. She almost laughed fondly at that memory. He never complained about getting hurt for her; busy work was no problem. But the instant his skin was that of a mutt, he gave her hell, sometimes for weeks on end. Though she would never admit it, she loved it when he disagreed with her. When he disagreed with her, it reminded her that he was there, and that she wasn't alone. She spent too much of her time alone to not appreciate his constant presence.

But now his constant presence was gone. And gods, she missed him. Sometimes, she would say so to the wind. "I miss you," she would whisper and stare hopefully into the fluffy clouds, praying his dark raven form would appear before her and give a report over the land of Nydia. She worried about him. Nydia was a land of fair folk, much like theirs, though not nearly as vast or powerful, and Calid was the kingdom of wizards. It could be said that Diaval was safe because magic was appreciated there. Or it could be said that he was in more danger than ever because there were people in those places that would know his identity with just a quick glance.

Every once in a while, she whispered hopelessly to the wind, "I love you," as though her voice would somehow travel the miles between them and let him hear her. She prepared herself for the day he would return—any day now, she promised herself—and how she would tell him her feelings for him. She didn't prepare herself for his reaction. To imagine being denied was too painful, and to imagine being accepted was too good to be true.

She wasn't ready to accept a physical relationship. She didn't think she ever would be. But he had to know about her feelings. "I love you," she whispered into the whistling wind.

"How did you know I was there?" Aurora teased.

Maleficent flinched. She hadn't heard her goddaughter approaching. She turned. Diablo toddled around her legs. She cleared her throat. "Motherly intuition, beastie. We know things." The little boy approached her and held out his arms. She painted a smile on her face and scooped him up into her arms. "Hello, little one." He'd grown quite a bit. She counted back the months since his birth. Twenty. She almost dropped him at the realization that, in four months, Diaval would have to be back, or she'd have to go searching.

The toddler pulled at her horns. "Granny," he burbled. She let him shake her head and pull at her feathers. "Pretty."

"Why, thank you, little prince." She couldn't say she was fond of being called Granny, but she was subject to her beastie's whimsy. "Handsome, just like your father." His nose was that of his grandfather. It seemed that in every way Aurora didn't resemble Stefan, her son did. Really, did he have a feature of Philip? The only sign he was his mother's child was his fair, soft hair. She placed him back on the ground gently, and he tripped back over to his mother, who caught him and pulled him up.

"He isn't back yet?"

Maleficent shook her head. "I've been getting worried," she admitted. Much more than worried. Some days she paced until the grass was dead beneath her feet. But Diaval would rather take longer on a mission and complete it fully than half-ass it and get back sooner. "I told him I would go looking for him when two years passed." Aurora nodded thoughtfully. She bit her lip, clearly holding a mental debate with herself over something. "What is it, beastie?" the fairy prompted. Her mixed feelings toward her grandson in no way affected her affections toward the queen.

"I am expecting another child," she confessed.

Maleficent went still. Another royal child would arrive. Certainly not within the four months before Diaval's scheduled return, but if he didn't return, she would have to go looking for him. Was this what the queen expected of her? She suffered for two years without her closest friend, and she should wait longer to deliver a baby before going to find him? A tiny part of her whispered that Aurora wanted no such thing of her, that the queen was merely there to inform her. Her painted smile grew. "Congratulations." A hug was demanded of her, and she gave it.

They sat together and chatted idly. The fairy's mind was occupied on the ebony feathers of a particular raven while she asked about names. Aurora's nose crinkled like she smelled something nasty. "Philip has demanded that he name this one. But, godmother, he has the most awful names! He says if it's a girl, he wants to name her Pigwidgeon!" She shivered. "Can you imagine? Princess _Pigwidgeon _of Wyeth."

Maleficent gave a dry chuckle. "Surely he can come up with something more hideous than that. Have you considered Gertrude?"

"Don't give him any ideas!" Aurora stroked her son's hair with her fingers while he slept in her lap. "I've tried everything. Genevieve, Vivienne, even Millicent. He won't settle with anything less than Pigwidgeon." He sucked his thumb. His suckling noises and breathing were enough to draw the fairy's attention to him. When he was sleeping, when his eyes were closed, Maleficent could see the queen in him. She was in the shape of his face, in the size of his ears, in the curve of his lips. "And I'm scared he'll come up with something even more hideous."

"Perhaps he could name her after his mother or grandmother. Human names generally aren't too bad, are they?"

"He doesn't believe in naming his children the exact same name as family members. He thinks we should be creative enough to think up our own names. But he is just…_too _creative!" She shuddered again.

Maleficent went quiet and thoughtful for a moment. She didn't want a grandchild named Pigwidgeon any more than Aurora wanted a daughter named Pigwidgeon. "Perhaps you could tell him a name and say that you made it up? Leila, perhaps?" Leila was a nice name, she thought; it meant night, and it was the name of the queen's mother.

"He'll recognize it. She's got a portrait hung up on our wall."

"Change the spelling. A new spin on an old thing."

Aurora squealed in delight. Diablo, amazingly, didn't awake. He must sleep like the dead, the fairy thought drily. An involuntary shiver passed over her, and she pushed those thoughts away while the queen blubbered, "Yes, yes, yes! That's what we'll do!" She gathered the boy into her arms and leapt enthusiastically to her feet. She planted a quick kiss on Maleficent's cheek. "I'll go tell him that right now! Goodbye, godmother!" She sprang into the undergrowth like a colt. Her teenage years were gone, but she was still youthful. Maleficent counted the years. Nearing thirty-two since she met Diaval. The blonde beastie would be approaching twenty-nine, then.

She swallowed hard. She knew that humans didn't live as long as fairies—obviously, as most fairies, including herself, were immortal. But she didn't know exactly how long they lived. Certainly it was more than a hundred years. Probably closer to two. She pushed those thoughts away and relaxed against her tree. "Diaval," she murmured into the wind. "If you're not home soon, I'll come searching. You've got a few more months." She was tempted—so tempted!—to cut that time short and go looking immediately, but she had given him two years. If he intended to utilize all of that time, he could still be in Nydia. Or, even more likely, he was somewhere on the journey back to her at the very moment she was thinking of him.

She let her eyes flicker closed and tried to remember the sensation of his arms wrapped so firmly, so safely, so comfortingly around her. He had smelled of blackberries. He had been warm. She wanted nothing more than to hug him like that again.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: This chapter goes out to my lovely reviewers, Ansigilos aka Anonymousse (forgive me my lack of spelling) and Diosa Luna. I haven't exactly abandoned Rings and Moorsville; I just really needed a break from them, and this plot bunny was rabid. I'll try to finish them soon. :)**

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><p>The days were warm, and she seemed to have soothed Aurora's ruffled feathers over her son. Maleficent didn't<em> hate<em> the boy. She couldn't hate something that came from her beastie, even if that something had her former lover turned enemy's eyes and ski slope nose. "It's so big and straight!" Aurora complained about his nose. "I'm worried he's going to trip and break it to bits." Philip had calmed down a little in his names; "He finally decided he likes Philomena better than Pigwidgeon, but it's still a far cry from something pretty like Genevieve or Vivienne, unfortunately."

Maleficent counted the days as they passed, each slower than the next. She broke them down into steps. Awaken. Eat. Drink. Patrol. Eat. Drink. Patrol. Eat. Drink. Bathe. Sleep. Sometimes she read in between those commands. Almost everyday she talked to the wind as though it were Diaval himself. "I miss you," she whispered to it. "Be safe. Come home soon." With each day, she itched to break away into the air and fly toward Nydia. "Please, Diaval. I miss you." Sometimes she said his name. Sometimes it was too painful to bear.

She didn't know how much she cared for him until he was gone. Some days she berated herself; she was acting like he was _dead _or something. But as one of the remaining four months ticked away, she worried for his well-being. "You told me you'd be safe, you stupid bird." She paced by her tree, not exhausted enough to sleep. "Hurry up and come home, so I can stop missing you." This was one particularly bad night, filled with haunted memories after a day of Diablo babbling about a portrait that looked _just_ like him. "Diaval, your grandson wants to meet you." She swallowed back tears. "She named him after you."

Sometimes she knew, she knew, that she was going insane. How could she not? She talked to the wind, for gods' sake, almost as though she expected it to talk back or bring a shape-shifting raven to her. "I'm going crazy over here." She didn't talk to the wind like she talked to her servant, though. She was never as open toward him. But the wind carried her secrets away; it hid them so no one would find them; and she knew she only directed them toward him because she missed him so.

The sun had long sunk behind the horizon, but she didn't dare lie down to sleep. She would have night terrors that only Diaval could chase away. He would glance up at her from where he slept at the base of the tree, and he would ask quietly, "Mistress, are you alright?" And he would wait until she gave him an answer. Sometimes he fetched her water and berries. Even better were the nights he was a bird, and he was unafraid of touching her, and he would swoop down upon her and touch his wings to her cheeks and croon at her until he knew she was fine.

Sometimes she wished that she would have nightmares in the hope that Diaval, wherever he was, would sense her distress and would return to comfort her. But she seldom wished for anything of the sort. On occasion, she walked by the blackberry bushes and just sat. Blackberries were his favorites. Their juices always stained his beak, and he smelled of them in the deepest form of his being. "I hope there are blackberries where you are, Diaval." Slowly, slowly—if days could go any slower she would find a spell to turn time—the second month crept by. "You better be on the way home by now."

She spent hours spinning her hair in different braids. She had never been vain; her servant had always made her despise that particular trait in people. But now she longed for nothing more than to hear him complaining about some dirt on his beautiful self. She read poetry. She had always loved poetry, but not this kind; in these words, the secrets of love lay resting their heads, and she drank them in. Her eyes swirled over books of love poetry, and she kept them hidden from Aurora as her own dirty little secret. But the queen was astute and found them soon enough. "Godmother, you're a hopeless romantic!" she teased.

"I most certainly am not!" she shot down.

"What do you call it, then?"

That definitely threw her off balance. She conceded defeat. "Alright, let's say I am a hopeless romantic. What words of wisdom would you offer to cleanse my blood of this intoxication?"

Aurora giggled. "There's nothing _wrong_ with it, godmother! Philip reads all of those things. I think he lives and breathes just to find out what happens on the next page. I'll swipe some of his old books to give to you. He won't let me get rid of anything! He hoards almost anything he finds like it's a precious gem, and he has almost a whole library of frilly romance novels." Maleficent could somehow imagine the young king doing just that.

The last time the queen returned to the moors, she brought a bag of books in tow. She grunted and sat down heavily. "_Never_ ask Philip for any recommended reads," she warned. "I think he expected me to cart a mule all the way here." She scooted the large bag toward the fairy. "He stacked them with his most favorites at the bottom and the sort of favorites at the top." She rolled her azure eyes.

The fairy perused through the novels. All she had read was poetry, but some of these seemed quite interesting. The queen babbled on, and she only half paid attention until she heard the question. "How long does Diaval have to get back now?"

She went stiff and prayed the young woman didn't make the connection between the raven and her godmother's obsession with romantic literature. "Six weeks," she replied sharply.

"You miss him, don't you?"

"Of course." She blinked up to the grand sky. Many words that she could say—_should _say—burbled to her lips, but she didn't say them because most of them weren't true. She wouldn't deny her feelings toward Diaval if put on the spot. "I've been counting the days," she confessed.

Aurora scanned over her form—the slightly ruffled feathers, the way her chin dipped downward when she spoke of him. She looked almost…embarrassed. The notion smacked her across the face, and she almost choked on it. A word spiraled about her thoughts and refused to be left alone: _twidderpated_. Her godmother was in love with her servant, the raven. But she remained silent, despite her strong urge to call her out on it. She knew the years had been painful for the fairy. She didn't deserve to be harassed over some little feelings. So she dismissed herself, and though it went unspoken, they agreed she would not return until the birth of her child.

She left without the burdensome bag of books, but she felt heavier than she had upon arrival, if only because of the uncertainty in the future of the moors.

Maleficent perused through the books and selected one that seemed okay. She couldn't focus. She started to read aloud, spinning the tale of princess locked away in a tower, and let the wind carry her voice away. She read of the gallant knight that struggled to reach her. She read of the dragons he fought, of the warlocks he tricked, of the harpies he thwarted, in the hope of finding true love. And while she knew it to be preposterous, she couldn't help but feel just a wee bit enlightened and comforted that she wasn't the only one awaiting the arrival of the one she loved.

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><p>"Less than a week now," she spoke. She was curled into herself at the base of her tree, where Diaval used to lay, and she clutched a book to her chest, trying to remember what it felt like to rest her chin on his shoulder and inhale his scent. "I'm going to come for you, Diaval. I'm coming for you soon. If you're on your way, hurry the hell up." She prayed for the wind to guide his wings back home to her before she left to find him. But night fell, and she imagined his arms around her, the warmth of his body against hers, and she prepared herself to berate him for making her worry so long. Then she would pull an Aurora and fling her arms about him, leaving him flustered while she choked on her heart and pushed away her fear. Perhaps she would cry. She had certainly missed him enough. It was to these thoughts that she slipped into a peaceful slumber, imagining the warmth of him against her.<p>

The days ticked by like seconds, and she left at the end of the week with nothing more than the clothes on her back. She couldn't stand the idea of carrying extraneous things about. They would only hinder her, and she couldn't risk any hindrances. She counted the hours it would take for her wings to carry her to Nydia. If the winds worked in her favor, she could be there in two weeks. No, that was ridiculous. Three weeks. Two weeks if she didn't sleep, but she wasn't stupid enough to attempt that.

She left the moors with no farewells, not even to Balthazar or Aurora. Acres of empty, unclaimed, natural woodland lay between her and the kingdom of Nydia. Acres upon acres upon acres. She flew quickly by night and rested during the day. She bathed when she found water and drank just as often; food was something she found scantily, but she didn't mind, because that made the blackberries all the sweeter when she tasted them. She didn't talk to the wind as she used to, but she would call out to him on occasion, when she thought she heard the cawing of a raven or the croaking of a crow.

The first night, she flew so quickly that she was certain she had permanently deafened herself for the rushing of the wind by her ears, and the following night her back ached from pushing herself far too hard. She fought the pain, but couldn't force herself to fly with the same fervor she had the night prior. _For Diaval. Find Diaval_. She found a good headwind and let it propel her so that she did less work. But the headwinds didn't hold the same comfort as they once had; they didn't chase away her memories and let her forget. All she could think while in the clouds was when would she find her beloved friend?

The woodlands were natural and devoid of magic, but that made them a comfort in some ways. The creatures feared her, sensing her foreignness, and it made her job easier. Diaval, if he was near, would come to her. The deeper she wandered, she called out more frequently, but none of the cawing birds were ever him. None of the blackbirds were ever the single black bird she longed to see. Her mind spun the worse situations possible—Diaval's body lying in a pit in the ground, Diaval limping somewhere with a broken wing, Diaval captured and held captive, Diaval chained up as a dragon and unable to move. She shuddered those thoughts away and squeezed her arms across her chest.

She missed him so much. Her longing grew stronger each day that she spent away from him, searching, searching, scouring the land for the single raven she wished to find. She called his name into the sky, knowing he would come if he heard her. She struggled to remember the sound of his voice. _He promised me he would be safe_, she convinced herself. He was clever and quick. He could take care of himself.

Her self-assurances faded when she arrived at Nydia. The nation was in ruins.


	4. Chapter 4

The place was completely destroyed. Rubble and ash scattered the ground where stone once was. Many of the trees were leveled into the earth. And the place was utterly, hauntingly silent. It was more silent than death itself. Her belly turned. She thought she might vomit. She thought she might shriek. She thought she might collapse. But none of these things happened. Instead, all she could do was whisper, "Diaval," in a mournful tone. She staggered forward a few feet. She took in gulps of air and sat down against a collapsed tree. _I can't give up yet._ She buried her head in her hands. _I have to keep looking_.

She found her feet somehow, and she traveled over the land of Nydia. She found a few skeletons with clothes and flesh clinging to them, but it appeared that most of the people had been taken; there weren't nearly enough corpses for a kingdom this size. That could mean that prisoners of war were taken. It could mean that Diaval was taken hostage. It could mean that he was still _alive_. She churned these thoughts rapidly through her head. He couldn't be _dead._ He couldn't be _gone._ He was still _somewhere_.

She didn't sleep. She scoured the land for him by day and by night, and she shrieked his name into the wind when there was no sign of him. Then, grudgingly, she jetted across the barren, fallen kingdom toward Calid. The prisoners would lie in those lands. They would be there, in some deep dungeon, unable to escape and fed meager rations but still alive. "He promised he would be safe," she murmured to herself. "He promised."

It took her a week to find the border of Calid. She had never wandered so far from the moors before in her life. She knew the people of Calid were human warlocks, but she had never met one. The place was rumored to be pleasant but prideful. If they were holding her servant in their dungeons, though, they would learn something about pride. They would get a personal taste of revenge, Maleficent-style. And she could do far, far worse than curse a first-born princess.

She stepped across the border and called out, "Hello?"

Not two minutes passed before two flustered men hurried toward her with enchanted sticks in their hands. One of them paled exponentially and almost dropped his wand, but the other did not blink. "Who are you, fair creature?" His voice held the barest hint of a snarl.

She bowed her head in the slightest. "I am Maleficent of the moorland fair folk. I have come seeking my servant, who was spying upon the land of Nydia before the battle took place. I believe you may have wrongly taken him prisoner." Her eyes flashed at the bolder man on the word _wrongly_, and he took a step back, away from her.

He looked to his companion, who blanched. "He was telling the truth," he mumbled to himself. Maleficent glowered at him, demanding elaboration. "Come. We will take you to our minister." She obediently trailed after them. Her wings tickled her cheeks and reminded her that she could escape whenever she wished. She was strongly tempted to just kill them—she could snap their enchanted sticks into splinters, and then they were helpless—and stroll freely through their countryside, but she knew that they could get her to the minister faster than she could get herself there.

Soon, she was being presented to a heavily robed old man who was too fat to sit upon the mule that bore him. He climbed off of the creature, and it heaved a grunt. Its back was deeply swayed. Pity rose within her. She forced herself to look the man in the eye and curtsied as well as she could without tripping over her wings. "Greetings, Minister Hector. I am Maleficent, protector of the moorland fair folk."

He bowed and took her hand, pressing his slimy lips to its back. She resisted the urge to curl her lip in disgust. "Lady Maleficent. I take it you already know who I am." He straightened. "You have traveled a long way to grace us with your presence, my fair lady. What brings you to Calid?"

She stared haughtily into his cool, dull gray eyes. "My servant is a shape-shifter. He was spying upon the kingdom of Nydia during the time of the attack, and I believe he may have been wrongfully imprisoned."

The next few faces were a blur; she met man after man, and eventually was led to one whose title was the "director of torture and interrogation". He guided her down a hall in the dungeons. One all sides, men and women were chained to walls behind iron bars. "After the battle, we confiscated all of the shape-shifters. We believed that several were spying upon us, and they needed to confess so they could be adequately punished for their crimes." He cleared his throat and raised his voice above the moaning. "Unfortunately, only one of them fessed up, and she was beheaded. No one else has dared to speak up." She couldn't restrain the lip curl now, and she was glad that his back was to her. "They all have a charm placed upon them, locking them in their human forms so they can't escape. Stay here a moment, my lady, if you will? I'll fetch him for you."

She was ushered into a small broom closet of a room, gray and stony with one lantern hung on the wall. It cast a dim light about her, but there was nothing to see other than a single metal chair nailed to the floor. She stared at it as though it contained the secrets of the universe, and she tried to ignore the sounds coming from outside. The groans of the dying and screams of the tormented didn't matter to her. All that mattered was Diaval, and getting him home safely.

The door creaked open, and a tall, dark-haired figure shuffled inside. He kept his head bent to his chest, not daring to raise it. She scanned over him. His shirt was in tatters. Bloody wounds adorned his feet where he'd been shackled; his wrists were tied together with coarse rope behind his back. "Diaval," she whispered.

His whole form went rigid, and ever so slowly, he tilted his head up. His eyes were clear, lucid, but almost empty. They were void of the humor and sensitivity she knew so well. "Mistress?" His lips began to tremble. "You came for me."

"Of course I did," she returned softly. She touched a gash on his cheek and watched it knit together. This was nothing how she had prepared herself to greet him. In her imagination, he was always healthy, always wholesome, tired but relatively unscathed. This…she could never undo _this_. She untied his hands and let the rope fall to the ground. The guards didn't complain, and they stepped out of her way when she stormed out of the stone broom closet. Diaval limped after her with his hands around his chest. She could see bruises through the rips in the cloth, and she knew he had broken ribs. But their primary goal was getting out of this hellhole.

One of the men apologized profusely, following them until Maleficent flung her hand at him and vines snaked around him. Diaval didn't dare speak to her. With every step, his chest burned in pain, and it took all effort he contained to follow her off of the Calid territory and into the destroyed land of Lydia. Once there, he leaned against a tree and watched the magic float around her hands. Green flames snaked back toward the land. A wordless curse cast upon them. He wondered what it might be—plague, perhaps, or famine.

When she turned back to him, her face was unreadable, but it was familiar and comforting the same. He took a small, reflexive step toward her. Her arms opened just a slight gap, and he fell into them.

She held him lightly, careful not to jar his ribs. She felt him press his face into the crook of her neck. Hot tears met her flesh. His knees sagged beneath him, and she carefully lowered them both to the ground. Her emotions couldn't be put into words—what was there to say?—so she instead put them into gentle healing spells. His ribs clicked together. Bloody gashes melded into scars. Burns turned to rippling marks in flesh. Finally, after healing him to the best of her ability, she cradled him close and let him cry on her, bitter tears of agony and relief. He was broken. She could feel and hear his brokenness, his emptiness, two years of despair washing over him. _Why didn't I come for him sooner? _

She ran her fingers through his dirty hair and kissed his scarred forehead. His empty eyes were so shocked that they stopped crying and lifted to her, gazing up at her through thick eyelashes. He looked young and old at the same time. She took his head in her hands and leaned forward so that their eyes bored into each other and their crowns bumped. So many things she had prepared herself to say. None of them were right. "I missed you," she whispered.

Then she saw it. A twinkle in his watery eyes. A sign that Diaval was not completely gone, not completely broken. He gave a shaky laugh. "You have _no_ idea."

Then, carefully, he pulled away from her and curled up on the ground like he had that night before he left their home. At that time, she had been afraid to touch him, afraid of what that temptation meant, but now she was unafraid. She placed his head in her lap. His weary eyes questioned her, but not strongly enough to let him speak aloud. She answered anyway. "You have spent far too many nights with your head in the dirt." He snuggled up against her belly, satisfied with that answer. Almost inaudibly, she told him, "I love you." She scratched through his hair with her long fingernails.

"You, too," he mumbled. His lips curled upward in the slightest.

She gently scratched his scalp long after he had fallen asleep; she picked off a few ticks and sent the little blood-sucking creatures along their way. Then, when she was too tired to sustain herself any longer, she lay down next to him and placed his head on her belly. An arm slipped over her abdomen, and he gave a dramatic sigh in sleep. She rested on her wings and let her eyes fall closed.

She had just dozed off when his nightmare came. He thrashed against an invisible foe and yelled incoherently. His legs flailed when she tried to approach him. In one smooth motion, she leapt on top of him and pinned his long limbs beneath her. She grabbed his wrists and clamped them to the ground. "Diaval!" she shouted. "Diaval! Snap out of it! You're dreaming!" She shook him. His eyes shot open. He cringed away from her as though he was preparing to be hit. She lowered her voice. "Diaval, you're okay. I'm here."

He sucked in a deep shaking breath. His whole body trembled beneath her. She slid off of him, giving him his space. A hand rested on his chest, a quiet reminder that she was still there. He took another quavering breath. "Mistress," he greeted in a small voice, almost embarrassed. He had no reason to be embarrassed. He knew that she had nightmares, too. "I'm a muh-_mess_." He took a few more gulps of the cool night air and fumbled for her in the dark. He needed to touch her, to prove to himself that she was real and that she would not leave him.

She let him pull her into a hug, and she smoothed his hair out of his eyes. "I'm here," she reminded him softly.

He inhaled into her hair. "I love you." So broken, so lost, so tearful, so afraid.

"And I you, Diaval." She would fix his brokenness. She would heal him. They would heal each other.


	5. Chapter 5

Diaval writhed on the ground in agony. His teeth dug into his fist while magic conflicted inside him. He wouldn't cry out. He couldn't cry out. He'd been through worse. She was trying to help him. Countercharm after countercharm wracked through him, and absolutely nothing could lift or reverse the permanence of the warlock's spell that bound him to his human form. They couldn't go home if he couldn't fly. Well, hypothetically, they _could_, but walking would take a year if not longer.

The pain left him as quickly as it had come, leaving a dull ache. His knuckles were bloodied with teeth marks. He sat up and rubbed his temples. Her back was to him. His stomach turned, and he thought for a moment he was going to be sick. She came all the way to find him, to save him—a journey of maybe a month or a little longer, for wings her size, but still—and she still couldn't fix him. She showed up after the promised two years, seeking him out.

Something within her had changed. She wasn't as he remembered. She could touch him; she could hold him; she didn't mind his weakness but instead tried to comfort him from it. She had lost her fear. She purported to love him. He wasn't sure what that meant, exactly. He knew what he wanted it to mean, but it was_ Maleficent_ he was thinking of. She wasn't like_ that_. "Mistress?" he probed quietly, staring at her dark wings. Her hair was unwrapped. He didn't think it'd been wrapped since she regained her wings.

Her voice was heavy. "I'm sorry."

He tripped to his feet. The muscles moaned and creaked in protest, but it felt so good just to be able to stand again, just to be free of the shackles that bit into his skin and the rice that dug into his knees. He closed his eyes against the brutal memories. Her arms wound through his, and he hugged her. Her breasts crushed against his chest. Carefully, slowly, they swayed back and forth, feet unmoving but bodies in synchronization. "I'm with you now. That's what matters." _Trapped_, a raven trapped in a man's shell. He had escaped the bindings of men, but he was still held hostage in his own skin.

Her wings were strong. Could they carry them both? Not quickly. Not over far distances. But surely, surely they would carry them faster than feet. The dark feathers unfurled. Diaval tensed against her, reading her as he always did. Their feet lifted off the ground. An inch, two, a foot, three, a yard. Diaval burrowed his face into her hair and tangled his legs in hers. He was afraid. She could sense it peeling off of him. But he didn't protest. Still, after all these years, he never complained against her. One might argue that his lack of argumentativeness was the reason they were in this mess.

She didn't fly as quickly as she usually did, instead using the speeds that she reserved for their long ago races when Diaval the raven wanted to show off, when he would dive through the air and crow about his beautiful self until she rolled her eyes and threatened to turn him into a dog. She held Diaval the man to her and let her wings propel them toward the moors. How many miles stretched between them and their home? How long would it be before Diaval could meet the child named for him? Would the second child be there by the time they arrived? Undoubtedly, at this pace. Diaval was sore and weak, grossly underweight, and he jumped at anything that moved.

But he sought comfort in her, and the least she could do was give it. She had sent him away. She had ignored her temptations to make him stay, and she let him go, and this was his reward. He lost his wings as she had so many years ago. She held him close to her while the wind tousled his hair. His eyelashes brushed her neck when he blinked. The landscape passed beneath them quickly, a smear of destruction and rubble. She wondered where Diaval had been when Nydia was attacked. She wondered if he had resisted. That was a preposterous notion. He was a bird; he would have flown away at the first sign of danger. And they had still managed to capture him.

She wondered how many scars he now had on his back. He hadn't let her take off his shirt yet, not even for her to make sure his gashes were healed. She wouldn't force herself on him. He was so hurt, so emotionally tormented. She needed to comfort him. But she didn't know how.

She flew until her wings ached under the extra weight. They landed. Diaval carefully extricated himself from their tangled limbs. Maleficent was not one to count the hours, but the sun was setting; she figured it had been several since they left the ground. Perhaps they would be out of Nydia's remnants soon. But tonight, they were still left in the destroyed realm that once housed fair folk of all kinds. The fairy fashioned a large nest out of some vines and grass, and they curled together like kittens. They lay facing each other, hands on each other's waists, chests touching, crowns bumping, noses brushing.

Maleficent's fear was gone, but Diaval's replaced it. He couldn't sleep for the forest noises. Crickets disturbed his fear of fire. Tree frogs sounded like the moaning from the cell next to his. The trickling brook made him have to pee, and it reminded himself of when the pain grew so great that he pissed down his leg like some kind of dog.

He wasn't really a raven anymore, was he? He was a man now. He was a spirit stuck in a foreign body for eternity, or for as long as it took his mistress to find a countercharm.

"Sleep, Diaval," she reminded him softly. His dark eyes met hers. They were betrayed, hurt, frightened. "I'm here," she promised. She could chase away his nightmares the way he once drowned hers. Slightly, slowly, inch by inch, she bent her chin down toward his. She felt his breath against her lips for a moment, and then they brushed with the tenderest of soft affections. His breath hitched, and he pulled away. His fingers were trembling. Where was he? Where was the witty bird she loved so? Who was this frightened creature before her, trapped in a skin that wasn't his own? "I love you," she told him.

His eyes fell closed. "I love you," he replied. "I'm scared," he admitted. She smelled as good as he remembered her.

"I know. That's okay." He had waited on her. It was her turn to wait on him. "We'll be home soon."

"Soon as in minutes, months, or years?" he quipped. She restrained a squeal of joy at the sign of his sharp humor reappearing. "I waited for soon to come for years. And there was nothing_ soon_ about it."

His comment stung her, and guilt prickled within her. She shouldn't have sent him away. She should've sought him out sooner. She should've gone with him. Should've, would've, could've. "I'm sorry," she murmured, touching his cheek with her hand. A new scar rippled there. She relaxed a little, putting space between them. If he was angry, he had right to be.

He instantly missed the warmth of having her so near, and he reached for her. She stretched one dark wing over him. He snuggled into its touch. It soothed his soreness and scars. It let him sink into the depth of happiness. It let him be free. He pressed his cheek against her shoulder. Her arms snaked about him again, and he rested his head on her chest. How many hours had he spent thinking of this? How long had he wasted away, wishing that she would come save him? How many minutes had ticked by where he wasn't asleep but wasn't awake, and his mind's images of her were so vivid that she spoke to him?

Before, all he had wanted was to love her freely, but she couldn't return his affections. She was scared. She was hurt. She had been betrayed. She had every right to fear him, even if he was a raven in a man's shell. Now, his only desire was the same, but this time he was only restrained by himself. And that _hurt_. "I love you." Maybe if he said it enough, he would be able to act on his wants. Maybe he could heal enough. Maybe he could hold onto her long enough to feel unbroken and whole again.

She touched her lips to his scarred forehead. "I love you." Saying it to the wind was much, much harder than admitting it openly to him. She had always imagined it would be the opposite, but with him so weak, so needy, the words rolled off of her tongue easily. "Try to sleep," she whispered to him. He looked afraid. The fear of sleep was not something she was unfamiliar with. "I'm here." He nodded and pressed even closer to her. Drowsiness dragged at him, and sleep finally came with her warm, quiet breaths steaming across his pale, scarred face.

He was haunted by no dreams and stayed calm through the night. Rosy-fingered dawn streaked the sky, birds dancing against the clouds. He mournfully watched them, sitting just outside the nest. It was chilly and his shirt was torn to shreds, but he'd awoken choking on her hair, and he would rather be cold than choke to death in his sleep. The sound of rustling feathers met his ears. She was rising. "You could go home without me, you know, mistress," he murmured. The rustling stilled, and she did not reply. "I mean, the people—Aurora, Balthazar—they need you there."

"And you don't need me here?"

He bowed his head. "I've needed you ever since I flung that farmer's net off of my man's body, mistress." Swallowing hard, he continued, "But I don't mean much to anyone. I won't be missed."

She sat next to him, and a dark wing pulled them closer together. "After you left, I slept at the base of the tree where you always lay, and I talked to the wind like it could carry my voice to you. I picked blackberries not to eat them, but to smell them. I hoarded books and read until my eyes were crossed to drown out thoughts of you." His eyes turned to her, shocked and wide. The obsidian gems gleamed at her. "I repeated things you said to me over and over in my head until I was certain I would never forget the sound of your voice." Lowering her voice, she continued, "Some nights I would pace dead places on the ground because I knew I would have terrible dreams without you nearby." His mouth was slightly ajar, his pink tongue slightly visible. She noticed he was missing a tooth. She fiddled around with a stray piece of bark while she kept talking to him. "Don't you ever entertain the notion that you were not missed, Diaval. I missed you more than I missed the headwinds." At her touch, he obediently opened his mouth. The bark fit nicely into his mouth, obviously shaped and welded by magic. He felt the uncomfortable sensation of bone growing, and then it was done. His tooth was replaced.

He leaned against her shoulder. "But you…you are _everything_." She raised an eyebrow at him. "You're the meaning of the moon, and you're the song of the sun. You're glorious like the dawn, and sacred like the night, and I've always been your servant."

She let her eyes fall closed. "You flatterer," she teased. She kissed his temple. The slightest of blushes crawled across his cheeks. "You have always been my closest friend." Her hand traced the back of his. A brand of an unknown country was there. "I don't know much about ravens and their nesting habits, but the heart of a fairy is not easily changed, and mine has selected _you_."

His eyes glowed with such joy and sadness, and she didn't know which made the tears swim to his eyes. All she knew was that, this time, he was the one who brought their lips to touch.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Trigger warning on this chapter. Don't bother me if you're bothered. I own nothing. Reviews are appreciated. **

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><p>Days trickled by into weeks, which bled into months. Some days, Maleficent carried his heavy human form in the clouds. Some days, after he was strong enough to support himself consistently, she walked beside him. She never left him, though he frequently encouraged her to. And once a week, their "off" day, she tried and failed to remove the anti-shifting charm from him. It always ended with him shuddering and writhing in agony, no closer to being a bird than he had been the day before.<p>

She thought she would be able to do it—she_ knew_ she was powerful enough to remove it, and she was clever enough to figure out a way—but she couldn't stand the idea of hurting him. He'd been in so much pain. She could see the pain in his eyes when lightning split across the sky in summer storms, when thunder roared and she didn't flinch but he wanted to run and hide for cover. She could hear it in the way he mumbled in the night. On bad nights, he would awake yelling and thrashing. Pinning him didn't help, not really. It brought the memories back more strongly, and his memories tortured him anew and ripped his scars open.

She tried to soothe his wounds with her words, with her touch, with soft kisses given in the blackest hours of the early morning, but she was helpless against the demons that had struck him.

He had ten scars on his back now. At least, ten big ones. The little scars couldn't be counted; they were faint white lines crisscrossing his skin all over his visible flesh. They arced over his neck, down his shoulders, the outsides and insides of his arms, covered his entire torso. They formed X's over his legs and grew more severe up his thighs.

His knees were scarred by rice of all things, where he'd knelt on it for hours on end. He spoke of these things very rarely, of course, but when it was the black of night and all was hushed and she softly asked if he could tell her what he dreamt, he would do so. After one particular night where she thought was going to have to beat the breath into him while he seemed to choke on his own tongue, he told her of how they shoved their victims' heads into tubs of icy water and held them there till they went limp. Another night, he had bitten his tongue so hard that it bled, and he told her that his missing tooth had not been knocked out, but snatched out of his jaw with a pair of pliers.

She couldn't bear to hear the story of how they'd lashed him with thorny whips. He refused to speak of his various brandings. And after some of his dreams, he couldn't even let her touch him, instead curling into himself and shaking the memories away. She never asked about those. She didn't think she wanted to know.

There were matching scars on his sternum and on the soft flesh under his chin, shaped almost like oversized snakebites. She asked, and he told. He told of the device and how it propped his head up to its breaking point, and how it bit into his skin centimeter by centimeter. _Two days_, he said. Two days until the guard decided he wasn't going to talk and took the thing with the prongs to a different prisoner. Softly, he whispered, "I thought eventually they would figure out I didn't have anything to say, or at least would decide what I _did _say was the truth."

Some nights, he cried, and all she could do was hold him and talk. He reveled in the sound of her voice. He didn't care what she said, as long as she _said_. She would whisper his name and stroke his hair. She would tell him stories. She would recite poetry to him and kiss away his tears between words until the fear trembled away from him. There had once been a time when Maleficent feared him, when he couldn't touch her for fear of her lashing out like a frightened, untamed horse. Diaval's fear was different; he rarely feared her, but rather being without her.

There were still _those _nights, though. Those nights when he would awake clawing at his thighs hard enough to draw blood, and if she touched him he would yell and raise his hands to defend himself, but never to strike her. Those nights were when he would curl into himself and whimper incoherently with phrases rarely but occasionally making themselves known. "He said I_ liked_ it."

Those were the nights that Maleficent would sit up and wait patiently for him to calm down. She waited until he crawled to her, still not touching her, still afraid. She whispered soft things to him, but didn't touch him unless he did so first. She never asked him about what happened in his dreams on those nights. She couldn't bear to listen. He couldn't bear to tell. Her inferences were enough.

The rain pattered down on them. She kept shaking her wings in frustration. It was supposed to be a flying day, but it was too dangerous to fly during a storm. Diaval flinched and cringed at every clap of thunder, and she grasped his hand loosely in hers. She hoped it offered him some comfort, but she wasn't sure it did. He wiped the rain from his eyes. Their clothes had long been sodden. The distance between their shoulders was small. The silence was larger until Diaval broke it. "What's Aurora's kid like?"

She almost jumped at the sudden words. "He's great. She named him after you." He tripped, and she steadied him. "Diablo."

He swallowed hard, clearly taken aback. "Oh." He bit his lip. "What does he look like?"

Maleficent stiffened. "He's a spitting image of his grandfather."

Diaval snorted. "Big noses must skip generations."

"She's expecting again. Philip gets to name this one. He's stuck between the names Pigwidgeon and Philomena." Diaval gave her a look. "Yes, I_ am_ serious."

The wind picked up and pushed them from behind, and Maleficent wanted nothing more than to snatch him up into her arms and sail into the open air, danger be damned. The wind felt so good on her wet wings. He followed her gaze up to the gray sky. He wanted to tell her to fly, it was alright, he could walk below her, he didn't mind. But he knew that she would snap at him and, even worse, might demand that he fly with her, and he absolutely no intention of freezing to death five hundred feet in the air.

He missed his wings. He missed the sky. He missed the open winds. But he didn't miss them as badly as he'd missed her. Before he even realized he was speaking, he whispered, "I never slept, not really. But when I got so tired that I was going to pass out…sometimes I would see you." Her hand tightened on his. "I never worried about forgetting. You talked to me every night." His face tilted back to look at the sky, and he let the icy rain sting his eyes. "That was what kept me sane, I think." Memories, memories, just memories, of blood and semen littering stone, the crack of a whip, tears streaming down his face, spit stringing out of his mouth in streams as he begged, begged for it to _stop_. The voice, that dreaded voice, _You liked it_.

Those were the dreams that, when he awoke, he couldn't touch her. He was dirty. He was violated. He was contaminated. Those dreams made him fear _her_, _her_ of all people, she who had saved him. And he hated himself for it, hated himself until he managed to take control of his birdlike instinct of flight and crawled back to her, curled next to her, and listened. He listened to anything she said, because her voice saved him from the darkness of his own mind.

Night was falling. They took shelter under the hollow of a fallen tree's roots. He lay at her side and felt her fingers trace the scars on his chest, old scars that he had received as a bird before she saved him from that farmer's net. His eyes fell closed, but he wouldn't sleep. His thoughts had wandered too freely today, and he was going to regret it if he let himself go into the abyss known as slumber.

She nuzzled his jaw. A soft kiss pressed itself to the corner of his lips, and he obediently turned toward her. She kissed him for just a few moments and rested her head in the crook of his neck, her wings warming both of them like a blanket. "I love you." How long had it been since she vowed to never use those three little words again?

He slid his arm around her. "I love you," he returned softly. A few minutes of silence passed by until he tentatively spoke up again. "Maleficent?"

Her given name startled her, but she didn't mention it. "Yes?"

"Thank you. For saving me." He touched his forehead to her hair. "I thought you wouldn't come for me."

She smiled into his chest. "I would've killed anyone who tried to stop me." She couldn't imagine a world where she hadn't come for him. How long had it been since she wouldn't have come for him? How many years had passed since she would have shrugged off his absence and found another bird to serve her? She counted back the decades. She had loved Diaval—though, at that time, she wouldn't have identified the emotion as such—before she even loved Aurora. "The moors are far too silent without your beautiful self."

"I thought you might have relished in the silence."

She kissed the scars under his chin. "Silence is far too deafening. I feared I was losing my mind almost every day." She felt his warm breaths whistle against her face. It was how she had dreamed. It was how she hadn't. It was amazing. It was terrible. It didn't matter. She had him now, regardless of the circumstances. He was _safe_ with her. Wings or no wings, her feelings for him had not changed. She still loved him. He still loved her.

His breaths eased into sleep. She thought, maybe, if she held him tightly enough and whispered to him before he stirred, he wouldn't dream. But he always dreamed.

It wasn't one of those nights. It wasn't a particularly bad night at all, with limited yelling and thrashing before he came to. He didn't cry, which was a plus; she knew how embarrassed he was when he cried in front of her. She didn't ask, but instead told the story of Hansel and Gretel until he calmed enough to try to sleep once again. She managed to follow him into slumber with his head nestled in the crook of her neck.

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><p>Months trickled by them. Maleficent realized that it'd been a year since she left to find him. It'd been three since he'd seen his home. They walked more than ever with winter making the skies almost too cold to be bearable. They took to sleeping during the day in shifts, each making sure the other didn't freeze to death, and they traveled at night, when it was so cold that to cease moving could mean death. Walking over the land took a lot longer than flying it. They were both frustrated with the distance that only seemed to grow. Diaval often wondered how she didn't just abandon him.<p>

She fought for his wings fiercely. She used every countercharm she could think of, and she made up a few on the spot until it was a battle of raw magic and complexity of curses. Once, just once, she thought she had it, she thought she could pull it out of him and toss it aside, before she realized he was leaking white foam from his mouth and seizing uncontrollably. Her fear for him took over, and the foreign magic shot back into him like a snake slithering away from an enemy while she tried to keep him from choking on his tongue.

"I cuh-cuh-could kuh-kill the being that muh-made wuh-wuh-winter," Diaval chattered, holding his hands under his arms. She had transfigured their clothes into the heaviest winter garments she could think of, but it still wasn't enough to hold in the warmth they needed, and they shared her wings as wind deflectors.

"Me too," she agreed, slipping her arm over his shoulders. His lips were nearly blue and chapped almost bloody. Frost clung to his hair; the wind kept pulling his hood off of his head until he gave up on it.

"I duh-don't suppose you know how fuh-far we are?"

She shook her head and tried to pull him closer. He was freezing, but the only solution she had to warm him up was to keep him moving. "We're closer than we were yesterday." He trembled like a leaf beneath her touch. He was but a man; he didn't have a fairy's resistance to the cold. His eyes streamed with each gust of the unharnessed wind.

She turned her eyes to the black winter sky and longed to shelter him. But there was no shelter to be found, no building to run to, nothing to protect him from the frigid reality around them. Dawn came, but the light didn't show through the clouds, and it was too cold to sleep. It was simply too cold. So they stumbled on, wings leaving trails behind them in the snow. Maleficent could only wonder one thing: _When will we ever get home?_


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: One more (longer) chapter after this one, and this will be done, too! I'm starting another AU fic; I think I'm going to drop canon-verse for a little while and try to be more creative in my ideas. Even I get tired of hurting Diaval. Disclaimer: I own nothing. Reviews are appreciated!**

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><p>They felt the blizzard coming before it came upon them. The temperature plummeted. The sky blackened with heavy clouds. And there was nowhere to seek shelter. The gusty winds pushed and pulled at them; several times Maleficent's wings almost made them airborne. Even the fairy was beginning to feel winter's icy bite. Diaval collapsed on his knees in the snow. She wanted nothing more than to lie down with him and just rest. How long had it been since they slept? Too long. "Get up." She struggled to lift him off the ground. "Get up, Diaval. Get up." His legs wouldn't stay beneath him. "I can't carry you. You need to walk." She knelt beside him and wrapped her wings around him. She wasn't even completely sure he could hear her voice in the howling winds. "Get up." His fingers were blue. He had long lost the ability to speak for his clattering jaw.<p>

He turned his eyes upon her. They were fearful but trusting. He trusted her to get them out of this mess, and that burned within her. She couldn't fly with them; her wings were heavy with ice. He had to walk. "Diaval, please stand up." She pulled at him, tried to coax him up, and he rose with her, leaning on her heavily. _Find shelter_. They wouldn't survive out in this weather.

His cheek brushed hers, and it was ice cold. His clothes were sodden with the snow that melted against his skin and eventually refroze. Desperately, she tried to shake the ice off of her wings. Maybe, if nothing else, she could outfly the storm. Or she could get them both killed by flying blindly into a tree. She didn't have an option. He was going to freeze to death if she couldn't find shelter. "Dammit, Diaval, I did not walk this bloody far for you to freeze to death!" She fumbled for a hold on him, and he obediently squeezed her with his trembling limbs.

Her wings were heavy, reluctant to move, but with some force, they managed to lift them both off the ground. She fought the wind and tried to get high enough to see something—anything—that could protect them. He weighed her down, his garments slick with ice and snow, and she was holding him too tightly to be comfortable, but he didn't complain. There was nothing for miles and miles, nothing but white trees and frigid wind that seemed to whisper _death _into their ears.

Then, she spied it. A dark cave, a small hole of blackness. Diaval's form quaked uncontrollably against her. He wasn't strong enough to bear up under this. A year had passed, but he was still recovering. He still needed time. His grip on her was going slack. "Love you," he chattered in a puff of warm breath against her cheek.

"Diaval!" she snapped. Her wings cracked loudly as she dove toward the cave, fighting the push-pull force of the battering winds. "Stay awake, Diaval, you have to stay awake." If she wasn't concerned with dropping him, she would've slapped him.

The cave was by no means warm, but it was dry. With a wave of her hand, the evergreen trees bent to shield the entrance. His feet settled on the ground, and he promptly slumped over. Her numb fingers worked at the buttons on his coat. She had to get him out of his sodden clothes. Dark eyes flashed to her. Blue lips tried to protest, bluer fingers trying to pry hers away. "Diaval, I have to get you out of these clothes." He was frightened—terrified—of being exposed to her. A trait of man and man alone. Animals never feared anything of the sort. "I'm trying to help you." His fingers gradually loosened, and she continued to work on his buttons until he was stripped down bare. Her robes quickly pooled on the ground beside her, and she curled next to him.

Several jolts of magic transfigured their clothes to a large quilt, and she pulled it over them. A quick drying spell made the frost dissipate. She took one of his hands between her own and began to rub at it fiercely. His jaw was clenched closed. He was uncomfortable. What, did he think that she _enjoyed_ being naked with him? Well, under these circumstances, anyway. She rested his ice block of a hand on her belly and chafed it until the skin was red and raw, warmer than it was before but still not warm enough. "Stay awake." She reached for his other hand. "C'mon, Diaval, you can't sleep yet."

He turned his head away from her. His body was stiff, stiff against her, refusing to relax. She sighed. "Please bear with me." She knew he was fighting memories as well as embarrassment. Gently, she placed his hand back on his chest. Slowly, it moved around her neck and curled her closer to him. He still refused to look at her, but his muscles were gradually loosening. "Thank you." She let her nose brush against his collarbone. She could feel rippling scars where she was pressed against him.

With a soft hand, she took his chin and turned his head toward her. His swimming eyes closed, and he pressed his forehead into her hair with a soft smile. She rested her severe cheekbone on his chest and carefully trailed her fingers up and down his belly. He tried to still her hand. "Tickles," he protested.

"I know," she replied. "You have to stay awake." She kept tickling him until he squirmed beside her. The shiver had left his skin for the most part; it seemed to return when something private rested against him too long. She pulled her wings over them and let the soft feathers comfort him. "We'll stay here for the next few days. It was insane to persist in that weather. We should have taken shelter a week ago."

His face fell. "I just want to go home." His voice had a broken sound that was generally reserved for his nightmares. "Mini me is going to be a grown up by the time we get back," he complained, trying to lighten the mood.

"He won't," she assured him. "He'll be just as annoyingly young as I left him. Except he might have broken his nose a few times by now."

He smiled and let his eyes flutter closed. "Can I sleep now?" She nodded against him. Her breasts were pressed into his side. He didn't like that, but he didn't move away, because she was so warm and soft, skin like silver silk. He took a deep breath, and with the exhale, his muscles relaxed completely. "I love you."

"Love you." Her eyelashes brushed his skin. "Sleep. I'm here." His fingers laced with hers. She felt him recline into sleep. She kissed his cheek and softly whispered, "We'll get home. I promise."

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><p>Winter trickled by them slowly, and Maleficent refused to let them leave until the snow was sure not to return. The time was good for Diaval; it helped him heal. His nightmares came less often and less severely, and they were easily soothed. <em>Those nights<em> became almost nonexistent, only reappearing once after they had a nasty spat over leaving or staying. His mind mended. His body regained most of its former strength, despite being lined with scars that could never be erased.

But he missed his wings. He missed flying. He grew tired of the ground. At times, he would pace and pace until he was exhausted near the point of collapse. She tried. Gods, she tried so hard to fight the magic that seemed to have bound itself to his very skin, and she fought it until she feared he would go insane from the agony that ripped through him. He encouraged her to keep trying. He begged her through tears and snot and bloody saliva to please, _please _keep trying. _Don't give up on me_. And she did keep trying. She couldn't give up on him, because she feared if she gave up on him, he would give up on himself. She tried until he threw up, and it tore apart her insides to watch him convulse. "Diaval, please, please," she begged. "Hold on until we get home. I can look it up in my books, and I can find an easier way to lift it without _hurting_ you."

He leaned his head against the stone wall of the cave. His eyes were hollow as they usually were after she finished experimenting on him. "I'm going to go insane if I can't fly," he replied brokenly.

She took his hands in hers. "I'm afraid I'll kill you."

"I'd rather be dead."

She choked back a sob at those words. She gathered him into her arms and shed a few tears into his neck. "Don't say that. Don't say that, ever." There had been a time when she thought the same, when she felt the same, when she wanted to curse Stefan not because he took her wings, but because he didn't take her life. "Just a few more months. Wait a few more months. I'll find a way to lift it, I swear." She kissed his jaw, trying to do anything to elicit a response more than a flat voice and dead eyes. "I can't stand hurting you like that. Don't make me do it anymore."

Finally the compassion leaked back into his pain-addled mind. He squeezed her hands and rested against her tiredly. "I'm sorry. It's wrong to ask you to do this." He gave a broken smile, because broken was all he could muster. His knuckles were bloody where he'd bitten them. His voice was hoarse with shouts of pain. He didn't know how she did it. He didn't know how she was able to hurt him and still keep trying when he asked.

She hugged him, and his arms weakly clung to her as well. "I love you," she whispered to him, holding him as tightly as she dared.

"I love you." He flexed some tight muscles and kissed her cheek. "Thank you. For trying." She stroked the feathers in his hair, and he gave her a throaty purr, somehow a bird's and somehow a man's. He wouldn't go insane. He had her, after all, and she would keep him grounded until she could fix him. "I love you," he repeated.

She helped rub the aches out of his muscles and gave him water. The chill wasn't too unbearable, and she knew that they would leave their temporary abode soon. A question that had been nagging at her finally ventured from her lips, and she asked, "What was Nydia like?" in the hope of distracting him from her failure.

He rolled his shoulders back. "It was a lot like the Moors, I suppose, but it had a government structure like the human kingdom. A queen and a princess, and a castle as big as life to hold all their little minions. They all lived in houses, instead of nests, and they preferred walking to flying. Had little cobblestone roads. It was almost like they were pretending to be men." As he pushed his shoulder blades together, his spine gave a satisfying crack. "Quaint little place, really. I mean, if you ignore the fact that they got completely obliterated by their neighbors."

She gave a wry smile. Her lips touched his cheek and trailed down his neck until he shivered in a way that let her know he was uncomfortable, and she stopped, resting her forehead against his. He initiated the kiss. Her tongue gingerly probed at his lips, politely entreating entrance, but he didn't give it, and she didn't push him. He laid his head in her lap while she combed his ebony hair and feathers with her slender, pale fingers. A peaceful smile adorned his face. His breaths evened out, and thinking he was asleep, she ran her fingers over his scars, and then her hands stilled at her sides. His meek voice came. "Why'd you stop?"

She smiled. They would be okay. They would be okay eventually.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: There is a minor lemon in this chapter. Fair warning. Final chapter. Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. Reviews are appreciated!**

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><p>Almost exactly two years since she departed, she and Diaval stepped back across the border of the moors. The raven man almost immediately dropped down and lay on the springy grass. "No place like home." The sun kissed his face, touching his scars, warming his hair. A soft smile adorned his face, and it made Maleficent's mirror it.<p>

She sat next to him. "When you're done, we can go back to our nest."

"I missed this grass." He rolled in it. "I could sleep in this grass."

"But you're not going to, because dammit, Diaval, I'm going back to my nest _tonight_. Get the hell up."

She dragged him up by the arms, and he stumbled to his feet, only to pull her into a hug. His strength was almost completely rebuilt, even if he was still thin. "I love you." He smiled into her neck, the biggest smile he'd managed in a very long time. "I love you," he repeated. "We're home now." Home, the moors, the best place he'd ever known. The place he would meet his grandchildren for the first time. The place he hoped he would soon fly through, as soon as Maleficent managed to lift the anti-shifting charm.

She pressed her lips to his cheek. "Let's fly, Diaval. Let's fly back home." He nodded against her, and she unfurled her dark wings. He clung to her, and they lifted off the ground together for what they both hoped was the final time. The trees whizzed by beneath them until they landed safely at the base of their tree. Her books were in disarray, and there appeared to be many more of them than she'd left behind.

Diaval had barely steadied himself before there was a shriek of, "Diaval!" and Aurora sprinted toward them with a toddler in her arms. She almost dropped the princess in favor of tackling her godfather into a bone-crushing hug. "You're home! You're back!" Five years. Five years since he'd seen her. His hands squeezed around her back, and he pressed his lips against her forehead. "I missed you," she admitted.

He pushed her away a bit reluctantly. "Don't ignore your godmother, now. She missed you, too."

The queen flung her arms about Maleficent. The princess toddled about his legs and pulled on his knees, demanding to be lifted up. He complied. "Hello there, little one. What might your name be?" _Not Pigwidgeon, not Pigwidgeon, please not Pigwidgeon_, he willed.

She popped her thumb out of her mouth. "Rosemary," she told him with a smile. Her blonde hair curled around her face. "Who you?" Cerulean eyes danced in her skull like the purest of waters. She was beautiful.

"I'm your granddad, princess." He choked back the tears that swelled to his eyes. "Where's your older brother, Rosie? I need to have a look at him, too, you know." She pointed obscurely from the direction they had come and stuck her arms out to Maleficent, who was ready to accept the little bundle into her arms. "I thought you didn't like children," he teased her as he handed over the princess.

"I don't," she defended. "This is not a _child_. This is my beautiful granddaughter, whose name is not Pigwidgeon." The toddler stuck her thumb back in her mouth and snuggled into the fairy's neck, completely undeterred by the horns and wings. She gave the girl back to Aurora.

The queen accepted her daughter. "I left Diablo by the creek. I think he's infatuated by one of the lady trolls. Balthazar was watching him." They headed to the creek and were greeted by several balls of slime, but only one that had a vaguely human shape.

He first leapt at Maleficent, soiling her gown, but the fairy didn't complain. "Granny!" So he remembered her. She should have assumed that Aurora would have made sure no one forgot about the lost guardians of the moors. They were lucky she hadn't sent out search patrols over all this time.

She wiped the sludge off of Diablo's eyes. The gray orbs still peered at her, and they stirred a part of her that made her look away. "Little prince," she greeted. "Here, someone wants you to meet his beautiful self." She pushed him toward Diaval, and he scrambled toward the raven-haired man.

Diaval shot her a look and wiped the prince's face off with his shirt. "Let me have a look at you, my young prince." Maleficent was right; he looked just like the late king.

The boy grinned at him. "You my granddad?" he asked innocently. Diaval nodded with a smile. "I named after you." His arms tugged at Diaval. "Can me and granddad go to the water hole?" he pled his mother, who nodded amiably. "Yay!" He pulled on him until he stood, and they headed toward the water hole hand in hand.

Aurora's expression became troubled. "Godmother, what happened to him?" Maleficent turned to face her. "He has new scars. His eyes…His eyes aren't the same. He looks almost like he fears us, or as if he's waiting to be struck."

The fairy looked away. She had hoped Diaval had healed enough for the queen to not know the difference. She had prayed for it. Explaining his dilemma was not something she wished to do. It should've been his job, but he was unable to do it; she knew that. He was still healing, still coming to terms with it, and Aurora deserved to know why they had been gone for so long. "Soon after he arrived in Nydia," she explained quietly, "Calid attacked them. Killed everyone there, and captured all of the shape shifters. They suspected several of them had been spying against them, and they imprisoned them." She bent her head. Aurora waited with her lips parted slightly, her daughter still asleep on her shoulder. "The man who brought Diaval to me…His title was the director of torture and interrogation."

The queen's mouth parted just a bit further for her to breathe, "No…"

Maleficent nodded quietly and spun their tale, carefully explaining that the primary reason they were gone so long was Diaval's lack of flight. She didn't tell, though, of the pain it put him through for her to try to lift the charm, instead just saying that she wasn't able to break it without knowing the countercharm. Aurora listened intently until nightfall, when the boy and the man returned sopping wet and shivering, but thoroughly clean. The queen took her children back to their home in the castle, and the immortals headed back to their own nest.

"I'll start working on you tomorrow," Maleficent promised, draping one wing over him as a cover.

He curled into the tawny feathers. "I am happy as long as I am home." He leaned over to her, pleading for a kiss. She gave it, but not one of their normal, sweet, brief kisses. She touched the back of his head, pushing it closer to her, and her sweet tongue flicked over his lips, entreating entrance. His eyes widened, and he parted his lips just enough to her to sneak in. A shiver passed through him. She looked into his eyes, and she saw his fear. She knew it was wrong to scare him. But she really, really need to know just how far she could push before he snapped—this desire came from the deliberately malicious side of her heart, the part that had cursed the infant princess, the part that was still dark and nearly evil.

She touched his tongue with her own, and he shivered again, but he didn't pull away. He wasn't scared enough to back away yet. Her hand pulled at the hem of his shirt and sneaked underneath it. He gasped. She traced his scars with her hands. Her lips slid down to his jawline and sucked on his neck. He quaked under her touch. "Maleficent," he whispered. She could feel him, then, trying to push her off, trying to pull away. She persisted. "Maleficent, please, stop," he begged. She responded by entangling their legs. He was pinned beneath her. His dark eyes were almost saucers and filled with fear. "Maleficent, stop!" He was going to cry soon. He was going to break down.

She stopped, but didn't get off of him. "Don't be afraid." Her breath warmed his cheek. "Sh…" She trailed her fingers down him. "I won't hurt you."

He swallowed hard. She caught the single tear on her fingernail. "Please don't do this, I can't—I'm sorry, I can't." He turned his face away from her.

She waited a moment. "Diaval, I would be happy to oblige, but you're holding me down." His arms secured her position on his chest. They loosened and fell away, and she curled up next to him, her head nestled in the crook of his neck. Her warmth made his shivers cease, and she kissed his cheek. "I love you."

His eyes fell closed. "I'm sorry. I can't yet."

"You have nothing to apologize for," she purred. The dark wing covered him again, and he relaxed next to her. He knew he had nothing to fear from her. Not even if his memory marred her caresses into whips and her soft lips into a filthy beard. Her forehead rested against his temple. "Now tell me you love me and go to sleep," she teased.

He gave a small smile and turned his head, bumping their foreheads and noses. "I love you." He placed a soft kiss on her ruby lips. "You are the light of my world, the sun of my soul, the wings of my heart. And I swear that one day I will be strong enough to love you the way you want me to."

Her eyelashes brushed his cheek when she blinked. "I am content to have you by my side, my love, for the rest of our personal eternity." She rested her hand on his chest. His heartbeat could be felt through his skin. Her head relaxed against him. "It feels so good to be home."

He nodded sleepily. He curled up into her in such a way that her feathers tickled his cheeks, and his face curled into a smile

It was one of_ those_ nights, and Maleficent blamed herself for pushing him too hard, expecting too much of him. She berated herself for breaking the little peace he had managed to achieve in sleep. He quaked and pulled away when she dared to touch him, and she stopped trying, instead reading to him until he had fallen back into a fitful sleep. Slumber eluded her still, so she read up in her charms book.

When she found the anti-shifting charm and its countercharm, she wanted to scream.

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><p>Dawn light streamed down on her, and she stroked Diaval's hair in her lap. "I don't know what we're going to do," she whispered to his sleeping form. <em>He's not ready for this<em>. She bent her head. _Neither am I. _Her fingers combed through his inky hair and scratched his scalp. Obsidian gems peered up at her. "Good morning." She slicked the dark hair back and smiled at him.

He smiled back up at her. "Morning." Awakening with his head in her lap wasn't strange for him. He rather liked it. After so many nights of lying with his head near his own waste—if he could rest his head at all—she was a cotton pillow of safety. Soft and warm. He spied a charm book by her knee. "You already started looking?" Her face visibly fell, and she nodded, looking away while she stroked his hair. "What's wrong?" He tried to push himself up, but she pushed him back down and scratched the back of his head in that way she knew he loved. He sighed and relaxed against her. "Maleficent?"

"The charm can be broken," she revealed quietly. He waited silently for her to continue. She didn't for a long moment. But then, softer than before, she added, "But only by unity between mates." His brow fuddled in a silent question that she answered. He blanched. When he tried to move away that time, she let him, and she didn't reach for him.

He tried to compose himself. His voice trembled when it finally came. "I guess I don't have a choice then, do I?" Some part of him prayed it was some sick joke on Maleficent's part, that she would tilt her head back in a laugh and tell him how he should've seen the look on his face, and she would fling the perfect spell at him and he would be able to fly again. But her face was solemn and despondent. It was no joke.

Her lips moved. "You do have a choice," she insisted in a low tone. "You can choose to wait, if you wish." He stayed silent. She could feel that he was strongly debating it, and that burned her like iron. If anyone had told her she could have her wings back during those terrible eighteen years if she only made love to Diaval, she would have flung herself at him so quickly that he didn't know what hit him.

Finally, his voice came again, meekly. "I'll have to think about it." He stumbled to his feet and walked into the forest surrounding them. Maleficent didn't pursue him. She reread the page in the charm book over and over again, searching for another way. There wasn't one. The provided answer was the only way. Frustrated, she slammed the book closed and reached for one of her romance novels.

She read until noon, and she headed to the blackberry bush, almost expecting to find Diaval there. But he wasn't. She gathered enough berries and nuts for both of them, just in case he returned, but he did not make a reappearance until the sun was setting over the horizon. Her eyes were tired from reading, and she closed the book without remembering much that had happened during it. He was paler than usual, eyes troubled. She waited patiently for him to speak.

Finally, he bent his head to her. "Maleficent, I request that you place your mark upon my body as you have placed it upon my soul."

She touched his cheek. He leaned toward her, and their lips met. She slowly reached below his shirt and hesitantly placed her hands on his bare flesh. He shivered madly and closed his eyes into their kiss. Her tongue probed at his lips, and he opened obediently. Soft hands touched her breasts, and she sucked in a deep breath. He hesitated. "I'm alright," she assured him. She smiled into their sweet kiss once more before letting her lips wander down his jaw and onto his neck.

His quaking hands reached to unbutton her gown. She pulled at his shirt until he lifted his arms up, and she pulled it free. Her gown slipped off of her easily and pooled beneath them. She pressed her lips to his again and reached to unbuckle his pants, waiting for some sort of confirmation before acting. He nodded quickly. His eyes were clenched closed. A tear still rolled down his face, and she kissed it away. "Diaval, it's okay," she told him softly. Her feathers brushed against him in comfort.

He nodded again, and she unbuckled him. Soft hands guided his pants down over his hips, and they were discarded next to her gown. He tried to distract himself by unhooking her brassiere, and he fondled her breasts while she kissed his chest. Pebbled nipples twitched under his thumbs, and he rubbed them again and again until Maleficent shuddered against him in ecstasy. Her feathers were standing on end, each one prickled. He reached up to stroke them. They wriggled beneath his touch. She sat up slowly, and he followed her. She lowered herself into his lap and wrapped her legs around him. He reached for a kiss and secured his arms around the small of her back.

"I love you," he whispered. She returned those three little words in kind and slid down on him. The memories he feared would haunt him, though, were far from his mind. A membrane inside her broke, and she hissed in pain. He steadied her with his hands wrapped around her. Concerned black eyes met hers, and she gave him a gentle smile. She gave him another kiss and waited for the pain to subside. Then, slowly, she started to move her hips, eliciting a moan from her lover.

She had never realized the greatest pleasures of the world. She pumped her hips harder and harder, faster and faster, against him. Cries flew from her mouth, and her nails dug into Diaval's bare shoulders. He buried his face into her neck and whimpered when her hips ground against his as hard as she could without pain. Her thigh muscles trembled and her walls began to clench. She shrieked at him and arched her back, wings bristling. He filled her all the way, and he moaned into her shoulder. They lay down together, sweat-slicked and hormone-addled.

His swollen lips pressed to her collarbones. After a few minutes, he whispered, "Maleficent? Are you alright?"

She nodded. "Perfect," she finally panted. For a few moments, she forgot why they had done what they did, and she lay atop him, head nestled in the crook of his neck, prepared to sleep. "Do you want to change right now?" she asked him softly, voice thick with drowsiness.

There was a long moment of silence before he replied, "I think that it can wait till morning." She smiled into his chest. "You saved me again." He kissed her forehead. "I love you."

She licked her lips and pressed them to his jawline. "We can fly together tomorrow." He nodded. She traced the scars on his torso, but his breathing didn't hitch, and he was soon in a restful sleep. Somehow, she knew the nightmares would not return. Their brokenness had come together into one perfect whole, and they were never to be apart again.


End file.
